Hello? Is this thing on?

Oh, hai!

It’s that Loralee person that used to write here all the time.

Member her?

Whew…it’s kinda dusty in here isn’t it?

Hope y’all pardon the mess.

I’ve been gone from this place for 3 whole months and IT IS SO FREAKING GOOD TO SEE YOU ALL AGAIN! I cannot believe the sweet emails, tweets, wall posts and mentions that so many of you kept sending me during my time out. I am so sorry if I did not reply. I was trying so hard to take a solid and clean break to sort out all the things that resulted in me leaving.

Speaking of that…

I’m sorry I left you poor things staring at that totally depressing photo of me with pigtailed bedhead but things had been building up for quite awhile. But really, I don’t want my first post back to be about that. I’m sure I’ll write about the reasons I shut down and the pros and cons of being gone for so long but I need some distance and perspective before I do that.

So why don’t we leave it at this for now?

It sucked. I cried. And then I (finally) moved on.

And now I’m back.

And I’m good.

I’m really good.

And I hope you are as well.

:)

I have to say that there were times of intense boredom without the chatter of the Internet in my life. But times like that are what having an adorable 2-year-old pat of butter and a theater kit full of hair extensions is for.

Is he not freaking adorable?

It just about KILLED ME that Butterlump turned TWO without me being online to talk to everyone about it. And staying quiet during The Royal Wedding. And Arnold’s love child. And Oprah retiring and starting her own network (I totally felt she should have sung a rousing rendition of On My OWN. (Get it?) (I know, you totally missed my hilarity, admit it!). And Weiner-Gate. And The Great Mormon Fest of 2011 (Which includes Romney and Huntsman announcing for the Presidency, The Book of Mormon Musical and the fact that The Mormon Tabernacle choir finally did a flash mob.) And when Bin Laden was finally purged from the earth. (I DID hang out online the night the news broke with an enjoyable lot of lads (and lasses) that were just as glad of that fact as I was.).

I’ll update you on my kiddies in another post, though. Because this post is already going to be so freaking long that I damn well might kill off any of the readers I have left when they try to wade through it all! I thought for my first post back I could just catch you up on some of the tons of things that have been going on with me and then let it sit for a bit as I ease back into online life.

Let’s get some of the icky stuff out of the way and then we can go on to the good things, shall we?

My time away was not all fun and games.

I didn’t get any revenue for 3-months, I missed everyone terribly, I felt fairly lost for awhile while I sorted out some things in my life. But my low point definitely came the weekend that Matthew would have turned 8-years-old. That weekend sucked six ways from Sunday, people.  His birthday is always tough for me.

I miss him.

It was pretty much downhill from there. Before I went away we put in an offer to buy our first home. It was adorable and I loved everything about it. Our offer was accepted (YAY!) and then that weekend the deal fell through (BOO!). It was hard, but I’ve come to terms with it. (Mostly). After that bit o’ suck, I found out that the brand that I most wanted to work with in the entire freaking universe as a blogger (roll yon eyes down to the footer of this blog to clue in) declined to have me on a trip to their headquarters in part because I was not actively blogging. I have never really felt ‘bad’ about losing out on a trip or brand opportunity but this one actually made me cry. Like I said when I took this break, I knew it would come with penalties and well…it has. And last but not least, a friend blocked me on Facebook.

It was a super awesome weekend, that.

But SO MANY awesome things happened while I was gone.

For starters, BUTTERLUMP TURNED TWO! (He was obviously way less thrilled about this than his mama. I’ve got to teach the lad to age gracefully.)

And, I finally got my heiny into a recording studio.

I did something odd and deliberately chose songs that were super challenging for my voice type or that were waaaaaay out of my comfort zone as a singer. (2 musical theater songs and 2 songs from the amazing ADELE) I know it may sound odd that I didn’t choose things where I knew for sure that I’d shine, but then again, you’re talking to a girl that is both afraid of heights and flying and that jumped out of a plane just to prove that she could.

So, I took a couple of hours and laid down some tracks.

Wanna listen to one?

Since I am pretty insecure about the selections I recorded, I had a small group of my closest and most trusted friends whose opinions I utterly respect listen to all of them to make sure the wouldn’t make anyone’s eardrums bleed and this one was unanimously the hands down favorite. It’s a challenging piece because everyone knows it, it’s goes down reeeallly low for a female singer. (The lowest note is an E-flat below middle C, bitches!) and it’s musical theater, and I am classically trained. Which means it has completely different placement and vowel formation (Singing bright “E’ vowels is pretty much sacrilegious in classical singing, but essential to most musical theater.) Also, you have to BELT this sucker. And I am NOT a belt-singer. In fact, I only really learned how to belt three years ago when I played Muzzy in a production of Thoroughly Modern Millie and haven’t done it much since.

But enough excuses.

Here ya go…some listening music as you read, and read, and reeeeeeaaaaaaaaadddddd!

“I DREAMED A DREAM- LES MISERABLES”.

This song is so freaking EMO! CHEESY! ANGST FILLED BLACKNESS FULL OF DYING FRENCH HOOKER BOYFRIEND PAIN!

Which pretty much means I totally LOVE SINGING IT!

Also, it means I really want this put on a tshirt to wear:

The whole experience was so fun and any kind of singing again was really healing for me.

I also think that we need to have a blogging cast of “Les Miserables”. I vote that Backpacking Dad plays Eponine. :)

I’ll post the other songs (How Could I Ever Know, Someone Like You, and Don’t You Remember) periodically. If I get the balls to let anyone else but the friends I mentioned earlier listen to them, that is.

Besides getting back into the recording studio, I got to do some more camera work. Remember when I filmed those commercials for ChemDry? I was hired to film 2 more commercials. (Thus why I am standing on a set with the ridiculously good looking ChemDry technician wearing a ridiculously bright ‘mom uniform’.) (My ridiculously good looking fake family and fake dog also filmed with me.) I’ll post the commercial when it’s done with post production.

I stayed quiet on my personal brand but I have been working at my day-gig for the magazine.

And…em…er…I’m actually featured in the current issue of Where Women Cook. (I know, but I make a SERIOUSLY delicious recipe. Flank Steak with Chocolate Ancho Chili Sauce. To DIE for people.)

Besides the magazine we are working like crazy on our AMAZING annual conference called The Creative Connection September 15-17th in St. Paul that is a 3-day extraveganza for crafters, cooks, artists, entrepreneurial women. It’s got a zillion business, internet, art and handmade classes, amazing food classes (Dude, the former Royal Chef to Prince Charles and Princess Diana is coming to teach a cooking class. SERIOUSLY.) and a market place to buy the most gorgeous handmade….EVERYTHING you can think of.

Y’all should join us there…you get 15% off of the whole shebang if you register for a full pass (though you can buy a pass for under $100 if you go with the alacart version).

Besides being featured in WWCook, I am truly, truly honored to have an essay of mine about my well-publicized switch from being a Republican to a Democrat featured in the book PunditMom’s Mothers of Intention: How women and Social Media are revolutionizing politics in America that came out on June 1st. It’s a powerful read and I am thrilled to be included.

I also traveled quite a bit.

Even though, as I mentioned above about my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad, weekend, I was turned down by the brand that I live and die by to visit their headquarters, I was welcomed with open arms to a pretty rad trip to visit GE’s lighting and Appliance headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky.  We’re actually featuring the experience in an upcoming issue of Where Women Cook (and I wrote more extensively about it on Where Women Cook’s website). I genuinely LOVE working with brands. I love getting to know how their products work, giving my input on things I think work for them and thing that need improving and learning how their companies work. That trip was the bee’s knees. Rows and rows and rows of beautiful fridges, dishwashers, stoves and laundry machines, (Oh, MY!).

We got to cook in their GORGEOUS Monogram Experience Center. I made Red Eye Gravy, (First time! Who knew it had coffee in it???!) and I outed myself with my “Laundry Confession” (Don’t judge me.).

I also determined that I am saving my pennies to buy two the handiest time-saving appliances ever- the Induction Cooktop and the Advantium Oven. (Hello, Advantium….would you like to get married and have beautiful, fast baking little oven babies with me?). I also came home with a light bulb that will last me TWENTY TWO FREAKING YEARS. (Did you hear that, people?? Butterlump could spawn children before that sucker dies. Insanely cool.)

And I seriously got the coolest souvenir EVER. We all got handmade hats made by one of the great Kentucky Derby milliners in Louisville. (Pretty, no?)

We went to a dinner at Churchill Downs (wearing our hats, of course) and we got to see some of the Thoroughbreds that they stable there.

AND I tried my very first Mint Julep.

(Let’s just say the hats and the horses were a much better experience for me. See documentation on my first sip below.)

I loved the entire experience and I’d work with them in a heartbeat.

Even though I remain bitter that Jack Donaghy was nowhere to be found.

I flew straight from Louisville to Atlanta (Well, there was a hideously awful side adventure that I will probably never recover from that happened in between. But that is what drinking is for, right?) to attend BlogHer Food to promote Where Women Cook.

I also got to hang out (and eat divine desserts) with the sickeningly gorgeous and completely fun, Betsy.

(Who I can never thank enough for giving me one her Tasty Kitchen Tshirts at the insanely delicious party thrown by Ree. I could live in it. It’s so soft and actually long enough to modestly cover my freakishly long torso.)

Besides bloggity friends, I also made a LOT more time for my in-person friends.

I’ve kind of lost myself this last year.

I had no life.

BUT I AM GETTING IT BACK, DAMMIT.

I started entertaining again and filling my life and soul back up with hobbies, activities and things I love and long-time friends.

And Jonathan and I are now employed by a theme park and LOVE our new uniforms.

Kidding.

But I would like to point out that our precious matchy-matchy-ness was not intentional and I give much thanks to our friends for only lightly mocking us.

Speaking of friends, my roommate freshman year at Utah State University, Amy, came to visit me this week. This is us on our dorm room balcony in 1993 and here we are on the same balcony this morning. (Hopefully we’ve improved over the years. Heh.)

I loved her visit. We headed up to our alma mater and were able to get into many of our old stomping grounds like one of the theaters and even into our old dorm. HOLY GHETTO DORM ROOM, BATMAN!

(The laundry room brought back some awesome memories. It was a co-ed dorm. And that was a damn convenient location for some middle of the night macking like sea otters with your significant (or not so significant) other! RAWR!)

Utah State is one of the PRETTIEST campuses ever but this dorm? Not so much. This place was pretty iffy 18-ish years ago and it has NOT changed a bit. You know you are in an atmosphere-challenged space when the wood paneling is the most attractive thing about the place, you know?

There was something I got to see this week that was much more adorable than 60′s era wood wall panels, though.

I got to see my seventh GREAT-nephew born! Sometimes it startles me that I have so many great nieces and nephews at my age. I was an aunt when I was 5 and almost all of the nieces and nephews on my side of the family are all adults. My sister is in Arizona with my OTHER niece who just had her baby (another great-nephew) 2 weeks ago! (I know, right? It’s like they could open their own maternity ward or something.) Since my sister was gone and since I’ve been like a second mom to her kiddies since the time they all born, I got up in the middle of the night to come and be with my niece. Thankfully, unlike that time when I went out to get a Diet Coke in my pajamas pants and ended up helping deliver my sister-in-laws baby, this one was in a hospital and all I had to do was be moral support. He’s so freaking adorable. I LOVE TO SNORGLE HIM!

And last but not least, I finally watched the last few episodes of Sex and the City. I SO loved when Big threatened to run up and beat up Mikhail Baryshnikov. Seriously, I wish they had let it happen. It would have been almost as good as watching Bob Barker beat the crap out of Adam Sandler in Happy Gilmore. I know, I know, it took me forever to finally watch but if I watched them, then I would have to admit that the series is actually over. You should see how long it took me to read the last book in the Anne of Green Gables series. And I don’t even want to tell you how long it took me to watch the last episode of Friends.

What can I say? I’m terrible at goodbyes.

I’ve had far too many of them.

And I am really, really glad that I didn’t say goodbye to this place.

It’s good to be back.

P.S. I bet you thought I was going to end this with a bunch of random Post Scripts and an emoticon, didn’t you? YOU WERE WRONG! HA, HA!!!!!!! Night, peeps! I hope you made it to the end of this post alive!

P.P.S. But before I go to bed I should beg you to forgive any mistakes in this FREAKING LONG POST. It’s been eleventyhundred straight hours slogging it out and my eyes are starting to bleed.

P.P.P.S. That reminds me. I have GOT to get new eyeglasses or contacts. I keep telling myself I will get lasik but eff all if I can get the image of watching Jonathan’s eyeball get immobilized by drops and machinery and then sliced in half out of my head.

P.P.P.P.S. I really think that sight would put most people off it, don’t you? I mean, paralyzed eyeball slicing is just NOT the most attractive thing in the world, you know?

P.P.P.P.P.S. Although, really, NOTHING IN THE WORLD has been as off putting as seeing Congressman Wiener’s infamous “Gym Photos by Wiener”.

P.P.P.P.P.P.S. Wait…I’m doing it again, aren’t I?

P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S. Some things never change.

P.P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S. (Thank goodness.)

P.P.P.P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S. :)